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| Titel |
Physiological responses of herbaceous plants to climate change: a century long assessment based on the stable isotope analysis of herbaria specimens |
| VerfasserIn |
Cristina Moreno-Gutierrez, Rolf Siegwolf, Ansgar Kahmen |
| Konferenz |
EGU General Assembly 2015
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| Medientyp |
Artikel
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| Sprache |
Englisch
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| Digitales Dokument |
PDF |
| Erschienen |
In: GRA - Volume 17 (2015) |
| Datensatznummer |
250102424
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| Publikation (Nr.) |
 EGU/EGU2015-1740.pdf |
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| Zusammenfassung |
| It is important to understand plant physiological responses to climate change, as these
responses could influence global carbon and water cycles and could ultimately drive changes
in plant communities’ distribution and biodiversity. Some studies have already related drifts
in species’ distribution to climate change and manipulative experiments found short-term
plant physiological responses to variations in climate. However, plant physiological responses
may be species specific and their magnitude was found to decrease with time in these
experimental studies. This indicates possible long-term processes of acclimation and
adaptation in plants and urges the need to assess the long-term responses of plants to climate
change.
The isotopic analysis of archived plant material offers the exceptional opportunity to
reconstruct the physiological activity of plants over long time periods. The carbon isotopic
composition of plants is a good proxy of leaf-level intrinsic water use efficiency and leaf
oxygen isotopic composition can provide a time-integrated indication of leaf stomatal
conductance during the growing season. Previous studies analysing the physiological activity
of plants over long time periods have largely focused on the stable isotope analyses of tree
ring chronosequences. Trees represent, however, less than 2% of plant species found in
Switzerland. The stable isotope analysis of herbarium samples offers the opportunity to
reconstruct the physiological processes of a large range of different plant species from
different environments.
The objective of this study is to assess the long-term physiological responses of
herbaceous plant species from diverse environments and functional groups to changes in
climate occurred during the past centuries in Switzerland. In order to do so, leaf herbarium
samples from a large number of herbaceous plants species are analysed for their stable
oxygen and carbon isotope ratios. Samples are collected from the unique herbaria hold at the
University of Basel which cover 600’000 specimens collected mostly in Switzerland
since the 18th century for a wide range of species and environments in Switzerland. |
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